Hi, Steve. Can you hear me okay? Yes, I hear you loud and clear. Okay. Cool. All right. I think we can get started folks. So welcome to our special AMA today with a special partner of ours moons. And so before we get started, let me do a quick summary of what seller is especially for
us other network, by the way. And we're several is probably known best for our sea bridge, which is our decentralized non custodial asset bridge, where we support about close to 200 different tokens and assets across nearly 50 different blockchains and layer twos. And our core, we're a blockchain interoperability platform, we enable a one click user experience, allowing tokens and accessing DeFi game five governance,
privacy solutions and so on across multiple chains. And we have many developers that are building their interchange native dApps using our interchange messaging framework to gain access to efficient liquidity, coherent coherent, coherent application logic, and share states. And without further ado, I'd like to introduce our guest today, John winner Murphy, who's the lead moderator at the subreddit, or slash cryptocurrency, well,
welcome, John. Hi, thank you for having me on, Steve. Absolutely. I think this is one of the AMAs that many of the people were looking forward to and learning more about it. Could you tell us a little bit more about what moons is and how it works? And I have questions today. Yeah, well, it's a really kind of long and there's no short answer to that question. I
think because it takes a lot of background to kind of understand where we are today and where we hope to be going in the near future. But I guess to start moons are almost four years old now. And they were launched in 2020, I think in May, by Reddit as a token for our cryptocurrency that
users would receive about once a month, every four weeks, based on how many upvotes they got on their comments and posts during that last month. And the token was distributed, there was like a historical distribution first, and then each four weeks, Reddit would distribute a few million moons, typically, to thousands and thousands of users.
And those tokens were designed to be used as governance mechanism for the subreddit, and we tried to adopt that. Most of our discussions happen in a kind of sister subreddit called our cryptocurrency meta.
And we've had hundreds of votes over the years that affected our cryptocurrency's rules, as well as the distribution of the moons every month, you know, like things like maybe comments get more moons than posts and stuff.
And then so moons began, they were deployed on the Rinkaby test network. And Reddit covered all the gas, right? Because it was test gas. Eventually, they migrated to a private arbitrum instance that Reddit launched. And again, gas wasn't a problem there.
Finally, in August of 2022, Reddit migrated to Arbitrum Nova. And this was a big problem for Reddit was figuring out how are users going to cover the cost of gas for tipping, because if you want to tip people, now it's on chain.
Their solution to this was to partner with FTX US and allow users to buy gas, like you could buy five bucks worth of gas in the sidebar on Reddit, so you could tip people moons.
And that lasted a whole three or four months, about three months, I think, and then FTX went bust in fall of 2022.
So that was, you know, at that point, I thought maybe Reddit would just kind of end their involvement with the program. They launched moons on our cryptocurrency and they launched bricks on our Fortnite DR, the Fortnite subreddit.
And I think on the Fortnite subreddit, there was a lot less enthusiasm about the token. There was, you know, it was kind of a mixed bag.
And of course, there's also donuts, which are kind of the OG original Reddit community point, which I think were launched kind of half in partnership with Reddit by an engineer who worked for them for our ETH trader.
So those are kind of it. And they had always they were never like an official Reddit community point.
But anyway, after FTX went bust, I was worried, you know, Reddit might kill the project at that point, but things seem to kind of improve.
And Spez, the CEO of Reddit, like, talks a lot about blockchain. And of course, Reddit does all the stuff with the NFTs.
And he would talk about moderators should be able to run their subreddits like the business and receive some compensation rate.
That's always been a big issue of contention that Reddit is that moderators are not compensated.
So when Reddit was distributing moons and stuff, they would give 10 percent of each distribution to split up among the moderators as well.
So this kind of like Reddit was paying moderators at that point for a while.
So it kind of gave us a heart that, you know, Reddit was still going to keep the program around.
And around that time, actually, we started doing these AMA programs where you can, you know, contact us and arrange to burn moons in order to receive promoted sticky AMA for 24 hours.
So we've been running that program, I think, for close to 18 months or something now.
And we've started to rent the banner as well, kind of similar to our east trader where people burn moons at this point.
I think it's maybe around a thousand dollars of moons per day to rent the banner because, you know, we felt comfortable doing that because Reddit CEO was giving us these tokens
and talking about how we should be able to run our subreddits like a business.
So finally, this kind of brings us close.
And especially actually, you know, in last summer of 2023, moons got listed on Crypto.com and Kraken.
And personally, I kind of thought that would not happen without the blessing or some tacit approval from Reddit.
And moons at that point work at like 50 cents.
So not to talk about price, but just to point out at that point, Reddit was just still distributing two to three million moons per month.
This is like now a million dollars to thousands of anons on the Internet, right?
So anyway, that kind of brings us close to the present.
In October, Reddit, last October, 2023, Reddit informed us they were ending their involvement with the project and sunsetting community points in their words.
So that caused like a flash crash in the price.
Reddit renounced the contract so no more moons can be minted and kind of left us in limbo.
So since that point, a few people left the team and we have been kind of organizing among ourselves.
And now with the community's help as well, we've been doing a lot of votes on Snapshot.org about how to move forward.
Because, you know, in the interim, we've continued to rent the banner and we've continued to do the promoted AMA.
So these activities are now burning hundreds of thousands of moons a month, and it's a real kind of business operation.
So we are in the process of probably forming a Marshall Islands DAO LLC, which will kind of be the entity that manages these business operations around the subreddit.
And I think it's still an open discussion, but exactly what the responsibilities of the DAO will be in regards to subreddit moderation and other stuff.
But that is still kind of a quick version of what moons are and how they got to be where they are today.
So that is quite a journey for moons to go from inception to where it is today.
I mean, even getting listed on a centralized exchange that's recognized as Kraken and that's quite a feat.
For many, maybe I'm speaking for many or in general, you know, Reddit is similar to Twitter or X as a vast social media platform where users can pretty much discuss virtually any topic
imaginable, right? It's structured around these subreddits, which are individual groups or communities dedicated to specific interests,
anything from your cars to your hobbies to even cryptocurrencies.
So like Reddit's combination of like diverse content, community interaction and anonymity and user content basically forms the bones and the flesh of the entire system.
Now, I think from talking with the moons team while we were partnering up on the bridging side, we got to learn how popular this subreddit is.
And I think you guys are growing quite aggressively. Is that correct? And could you share any numbers with us?
Sure thing. Yeah. I mean, to a large degree, I've been a moderator at our cryptocurrency.
And so just to kind of clarify, when you say the team, for the most part, that's moderators at our cryptocurrency.
Although there's definitely other people who help out, like Melon has been really critical helping us here.
But soon, as soon as we're really hoping to get this DAO formed in the next two months, and then really the team is the DAO.
We're really hoping to get everything on chain as much as possible.
But for numbers, I can tell you that things move with the market for sure.
But over the last year, we get about 1.3 million uniques per month on average.
And we have 7.6 million members. And really, I think per day, we get about 200,000 uniques lately.
So 200,000 unique visitors to the subreddit per day.
Which, you know, when we talk about these AMA and banner programs, like we share these numbers publicly because these guys are paying for eyeballs.
So we need to let people know how many people visit the subreddit.
And things have been a little bit definitely, I would say, let me look at the graph.
We are in an uptrend since October 2023, for sure.
And the numbers now are kind of coming back up to last summer.
We had a big spike in activity in January with the ETF stuff.
We had a total of 20 million visitors in January.
So that gives you an idea, I think, about the size or magnitude of the activity on the sub.
Yeah, that is quite impressive in terms of numbers.
And you can imagine more platforms looking into this.
I mean, I'm learning what Moods is doing.
So way to go as pioneers.
One of the things that I always like to ask because I talk to about 20 to 30 different teams on a weekly basis here at Seller.
And, you know, I'm kind of smiling, listening to you about the numbers going up since the second half of 2023.
Because it seems like for us, when the market gets hot, you know, depending on the cycles, you know, we also get waves of projects looking for integration.
So we certainly feel the funnel or the lifecycle, so to speak.
And it's been very enjoyable to watch that.
And throughout Moods' journey, John, and, you know, you shared a lot of background and what it went through.
Was there anything particular that you felt like it was a blocker or one of the most challenges to get the project to where it is today?
I mean, it was always a little bit of a tightrope walk with Reddit because they didn't want to tell us what to do.
But they like, we strongly suggest you don't do that or something, right?
So for a long time, it was a bit of a balancing act.
And then I guess the fear and the big concern was always that, like, Reddit would kill the project.
And then that happened, right?
So I think now that really, I mean, it was a huge shift in the future of Moods.
I think, you know, we've survived it and actually, you know, the project seems to be growing still in a lot of ways, for sure.
And we're looking to formalize the project.
So I think that will be good as well.
So now, I guess, you know, and actually today is the day of Reddit's IPO.
Or at least they set their price.
I'm not sure if trading is going to begin today.
I am, for full disclosure, a Reddit shareholder.
But I participated in their moderator IPO program.
But yeah, I think now, like, the biggest fear is Reddit will come along and say, no, you can't do this anymore.
You can't sell, you can't make people burn moons for the banner, or you can't take moon revenue for selling the banner, AMAs, and redistribute it to users for their contributions, right?
That would be kind of the ultimate fear at this point now that the old ultimate fear of Reddit kind of ending their involvement with the project has come to pass, right?
So with that in mind, before I let you ask another question, I would just say,
even before Reddit ended their involvement with the project, myself and a few other moderators,
I'm kind of just having conversations talking about the possibility of expanding moons to reward contributions
and allow for governance of other platforms beyond Reddit,
perhaps like a decentralized or federated version of Reddit, such as Lemmy.
But now that Reddit has ended their involvement with the project,
we're definitely looking at that harder and looking to expand moons.
Beyond our cryptocurrency on Reddit, we're going to probably start enabling our tip bot
and maybe some advertising and rewards in other like sister subreddits,
like our cryptocurrency memes and our cryptocurrency moons and stuff.
But also looking beyond Reddit at possibly using moons to incentivize participation
and allow for governance of other platforms, hopefully decentralized platforms,
possibly Warpcaster is getting popular lately.
So that's something that's on our mind going forward for sure.
Yeah, we always got a lot going on for sure.
Yeah, I've seen many projects come and go.
And it's like projects like moons that you guys are able to break through the barrier
or gain one step forward, maybe a quarter or so, sometimes a snail's pace.
But these projects that continue to develop and grow are the ones that we're seeing as well.
You know, moons is deployed on Arbitrum 1,
but it's also deployed on Arbitrum Nova and Ethereum.
Could you tell us about your relationship or what the deal is here?
Because I'm curious as well.
Well, yeah, I mean, moons are on Nova originally.
I think honestly, Nova was to some extent deployed for Reddit.
I mean, they had some other like data partners like Google and stuff,
but it seemed like Reddit was the big project on Nova.
So I think they deployed on Nova because they wanted ultra cheap gas
so users could tip and stuff without having to worry about it too much.
Now that Reddit has ended their involvement in the project,
especially, you know, it's not clear what the future of Arbitrum Nova is,
It's not a very popular chain.
It doesn't have a lot of locked value.
So we wanted to start taking steps to make, you know,
maybe find more liquidity and, you know,
more users just by being on a more popular layer too, right?
So we've been working with you guys at Cellar as well as the folks at Arbitrum
who've been always very supportive of moons in general, I would say,
whether they're on Nova or migrating to Arbitrum 1.
And also Camelot is the DEX on Arbitrum 1 who's working with us
and is going to offer some rewards for liquidity, I think, on Camelot.
So, I mean, it was just kind of a...
Reddit had a good reason to launch on Arbitrum Nova, I think.
But now that Reddit isn't distributing moons, right?
And also the distribution part of it, they were...
You didn't have to claim moons.
You just set up a vault in your Reddit app
and then Reddit would send you moons every 28 days.
So they were doing that for hundreds of thousands of users.
So that deployment on Arbitrum Nova kind of managed the gas for them there as well.
I see. Thanks for that context.
And I know a lot of our listeners are wondering,
so how is Cellar and moons working together, right?
And what the partnership looks like.
So I kind of give a context where there is a native bridge
from Arbitrum Nova and Arbitrum 1
down to the L1 Ethereum using native bridge.
But that native bridge uses a lock and mend mechanism
that takes seven days to finalize.
So moons and Cellar became figuring out
that we could use liquidity pool-based bridge
to circumvent the seven-day delay.
So that was basically the core of the collaboration.
And John, would you like to add anything to that?
Yeah, I mean, I would just say that
we really appreciate you guys working with us
to get this bridge set up
because our users definitely don't like to wait a long time.
Like even like when we're on our Nova,
like if you just want to move gas or something,
especially if you want to pull ETH off of Nova to main that,
I think people would tend to use something like Orbiter Finance or something.
I was looking into the Seabridge technology
that we have now a real kind of trustless option.
And it's even better because you can provide liquidity for the bridge
and pretty safely passively earn fees
by providing liquidity to the Seabridge.
So if anybody, I mean, you guys have a really nice
high-level explanation on your website
about the different products that you guys offer with Seabridge being one of them.
And yeah, I mean, I think it's a really great solution
for not waiting seven days, right?
And also allow it, and it's trustless
and it allows people to earn some liquidity fees as well.
Yeah, and this ecosystem seven days sometimes feels like an eternity.
Things move extremely fast with this ecosystem.
And so our team is also, you know, we're very much into the research
and it's co-founded by a few PhDs in computer science.
So we put a lot of academic and research into what we do, you know,
when we launch a different type of a solution for bridging an NFT
And by the time I thought, you know, by the time they write
a publication about this, it was probably going to get old.
So things move extremely fast.
So certainly, I think the users would appreciate that for the support.
And thanks for the kind words, of course.
And continuing on, how do you foresee moons evolving
as more users are utilizing their moon tokens for its utility?
Maybe over a course of a year, two years, what do you see?
And are you expecting any specific behavior that you like to see from them?
Well, I guess I would say in the immediate term,
what I hope to see from moons is we're working on bringing back tipping
in the subreddit with the tip bot.
And for the time being, at least, it's going to be different
than how Reddit operated the system because Reddit used on-chain tipping.
So when you tip somebody, it was an on-chain transaction.
Currently, we're going to make it a custodial tip bot.
So there's no on-chain transactions.
And that bot is made by a guy, Rick Rivera,
who created for the Conehead subreddit,
which is another Reddit community point based around Reddit avatars.
And so he's been added to the mod team in our cryptocurrency,
and we're currently testing that bot on our cryptocurrency moons.
Another feature that is, I think, close to being finished
for the subreddit in that bot is the return of memberships.
So when Reddit was supporting moons, you could burn moons
or you could pay Reddit $5 a month with PayPal
and they would burn some moons for you.
And that would give you a membership to the subreddit for a month,
which allowed you to have a special flair.
And you could put gifts in your comments and a couple other things.
So we're working on returning subreddit membership
and figuring out what kinds of privileges and stuff that will grant you.
And those things, I think, we should expect to happen
in the next month, probably.
And that same bot that will be used for tipping and flaring,
I think Rick also uses it to run the distributions every month.
So we're working on returning distribution.
So I guess that would be short term.
In the medium term, maybe six to 12 months,
let's say three to 12 months.
We hope to kind of finalize the incorporation of this DAO LLC,
which is a huge undertaking.
Like I hate to say it's going to be three months away,
but before we do that, we have to write a DAO constitution.
We have to deploy some kind of smart contract basis
for our DAO organization.
And after we do those two things,
we can file our registration with the Marshall Islands.
And we have to reference the constitution and the smart contracts
in the Articles of Incorporation
and our operating agreement with the Marshall Islands.
So that we hope to happen as soon as possible.
I would say realistically is probably a couple months away
because in order to even write the constitution,
we have to have a series of votes.
Currently we're using snapshot.org,
which is great for off-chain voting.
But we want, I mean, we're trying to act like a DAO
we really want to put as much as possible,
everything to a vote about what the roles
and responsibilities of this DAO will be
when we file for a formal incorporation.
So that's gonna occupy a lot of time
over the next few months.
And then I would say, and probably year.
So out to a year, maybe start to branch out beyond Reddit,
I would hope kind of is the last thing that I'll mention,
whether that's to Warpcaster or Warpcast
or Barcaster, Warpcaster is for Barcaster
or something like Lemmy or Mastodon
or Nostre even some other more decentralized alternative
and start to try and grow a community there
where we incentivize participation
that allows for governance
and ultimately sell advertising there as well
to kind of support the system.
John just shared with us some of the inner workings
what these members work on
and oftentimes outside looking in,
you kind of wonder what do these moderators do, right?
But yeah, thanks for sharing some of the insights
that basically how sausage is made, so to speak,
because there's a lot of administrative stuff,
Yeah, it's really, I mean,
just to chime in a little bit more about that,
historically before moons, right?
You still have to moderate the subreddit before moons,
you have spam and people being jerks
and what off topic conversations or whatever,
as well as manipulation by companies
who want to promote their product in the subreddit, right?
So, but once moons became a thing
like the manipulation side of our team
increased dramatically from moon farming
and people using multiple accounts, all kinds of stuff,
it just became a huge amount of work just to do that
and then we add like these business operations
and we have bots that do a lot of stuff
and it is, it's really a huge operation.
It's kind of nuts that it all gets done.
For the most part when nobody's getting paid, right?
Like most, well, I don't know.
I mean, I guess it's something of like an open secret,
I guess that there's like this cabal of Reddit super mods
and supposedly like, I mean, they maybe,
not all posts are organic, I don't know,
but yeah, like, I mean, it is a lot of work
and it's mostly people doing it
because they like the product.
And now, I mean, I'm not trying to lie
or disregard reality like myself and other mods,
who have accumulated a lot of moons that we,
I would say earned for our participation
and work in the subreddit.
Like, I mean, we have financial incentive sure
but that's not true in other subreddits.
Like, I mean, I think most of us were like moderators
before we joined and moons were a thing anyway.
I think it's really people working
in a lot of different ways to keep these communities running
just out of the, you know,
because they like to do it and they like the community.
Yeah, I could certainly vouch for you guys.
I think you're super responsive around the clock.
And in terms of the roadmap,
what do you guys foresee?
This is a very common question that we get across
and I'm sure that, you know,
your community asks you as well as like,
okay, which chain are we going next, right?
Where are we expanding to?
Any thoughts that you could share with us?
I mean, for the social media stuff,
like I said, we're going to start to try to
expand the tip bot and flares
as well as maybe advertising to some of our sister subreddits
like cryptocurrency memes and moons and stuff.
And to hopefully other social media platforms
like X possibly or decentralized stuff, as I mentioned.
Beyond that, I think officially like really our,
at least my time is primarily occupied
with this legal stuff lately.
And it's hard for me to see beyond that.
And I know I like everybody always wants results
like can the debts do something, right?
I think that the legal thing is a huge issue
that's got to be put to bed the right way.
And then really, I think the sky is the limit.
There's no reason why we can't bridge,
I mean, especially now to other networks.
And ultimately, I think even deploy a new contract
that would be able to mint moons or whatever,
like there's an infinite amount of possibilities.
And I hope that within six months or so,
folks should be able to ideally submit an on-chain proposal
that will be voted on chain with moons
that would disperse payment from treasury holding moons
and USDT and stuff as well.
So really, that's the number one thing in my mind
is just getting this Dow created in the right way
with the right underpinnings of smart contracts
to really become not a pretend decentralized Dow,
but like a real decentralized operation
where anybody can propose anything
and all moon holders will have a say.
Awesome. And today, what is the best way
for someone listening today to participate
or try moons or experience it?
Well, if you want to get some moons for free,
I think you can go on our cryptocurrency moons
and we're still tipping out little bits of moons
so people can test the bot
and I believe you're able to withdraw there.
We also have tip bots on our telegram
and Discord which are linked in the subreddit
So if you come on the chat and you ping me at jwinterm,
I will give you a moon or something.
So you can withdraw and play with it.
We're really hoping to bring back distribution soon
so that you can earn moons by participating in the subreddit
just making comments and posts
and just via organic participation.
You should probably, and at least initially
via this tip bot will notify you once a month
that you've earned X amount of moons
and if you want to withdraw them,
execute this command or whatever.
But they are also available on,
I think Kamala is live now or they're about to go live.
You can get them on Kraken or crypto.com.
I'm not sure if they let you withdraw,
MechC allows you to withdraw but not deposit,
You can now, and then there's SushiSwap and RCPSwap on.
So there's lots of ways you can swap on DEXs
if you just want to get a few to try sending around
but it's just an ERC20 token
that now lives on Arbitrum Nova and Arbitrum One
as well as EAT Layer One.
For the most part, it's a token in your wallet.
We're testing the tip bot
so hopefully you'll be able to deposit there soon.
It's a little scary with that kind of stuff being custodial.
We just want to make sure that we have a good system
before we deploy it on the main subreddit
and maybe people deposit a lot of moons
that we have a good cold wallet system implemented
So we're hoping that'll be live in a week or two.
All right, before we continue, folks,
we've been listening to the lead moderator
at the subreddit r slash cryptocurrency, John Winner.
John, would you have a few minutes
to take a couple of questions?
Okay, folks, if you're listening in,
please feel free to raise your hand
and we'll get your questions answered.
we don't talk about speculative assets or prices,
if you have any questions, please raise your hand.
Also, if you'd like to follow,
there's another AMA, I believe,
on the subreddit r slash cryptocurrency.
If you go there, you'll be able to see the AMA there,
and I will also be participating
to answer some of the questions on the AMA.
So if you have questions later on after this AMA,
feel free to go there and post your questions
and someone from the team or myself,
if it's related with this partnership,
we'll be happy to answer it.
So any questions while we maybe wait for a question?
Yeah, there's some in the Reddit thread,
but if you had one, go for it.
And any parting words from you, John?
Um, well, one of the questions in the thread
is how did I feel after the sunset announcement?
I mean, I was a little bit sad.
It wasn't like a life-altering thing for me,
so I took it in stride, I think.
But they also asked what are the special characteristics
of the CC subs, so I guess parting words
and also how has it changed over the years?
I think moons were fairly controversial
even in our cryptocurrency,
because they, I mean, it's indisputable
giving away money for participation and efforts,
it just results in farming and manipulation
more than you would otherwise.
So that's been a huge challenge,
and during moon distributions,
that was definitely a different dynamic in the sub.
But I think what's special about our cryptocurrency
and why I like to participate and moderate there
is that there's not a lot of places,
where you can go talk in a fairly open forum
about any cryptocurrency.
I think I got involved in cryptocurrency
more than 10 years ago now.
And when I started, I like to use
bitcointalk.org and Reddit and Twitter.
And Twitter is kind of all over the place
and a totally open space.
Reddit is a more curated and moderated space.
And it's tricky to do a cryptocurrency subreddit
that's really kind of fair to all projects.
So I think that's what's special about our cryptocurrency
is that we've done a pretty good job of that over the years.
And I think that's a challenge
that I like to help figure out
so that there is a space that's open
and fair to all cryptocurrency projects
and that people can come to talk about the news of the day
and hear answers from not echo chamber, right?
Yeah, there's certainly a sense of belonging there
It's similar to X in a way that you have diverse content
and you could drill down as much deep
as you like for a particular or very specific topic.
So it's a great platform to do that.
John, you've shared more than just tidbits to our listeners
not only where moons is at it
but also how they can directly get some moons
and experience using the subreddit.
So much thank you for that.
And if you'd like to say any,
if you have any questions, let me know.
I mean, cheers. Thank you guys for having me on
and thank you for working with us to get the bridge live.
I appreciate both of those things.
And thank you to everyone in the audience for listening
and have a happy Thursday, I guess.
And for our listeners, you can learn more about moons project
on crypto, I mean, Reddit.R slash cryptocurrency
and to learn more. Thank you, everybody.